I’ve been on the wrong side of Jon Gray ($16,800) all season long it seems like. I drafted him in season long leagues, only to suffer through his miserable first half and drop him once he was sent to the minors. Next, he was picked up by another team only to see him go on a run that was ace-like. Besides his most recent hiccup in LAA, Gray has given up more than 3 ER just once since his return. Tonight, he gets the hapless Padres in Petco, which is a dream matchup for any pitcher, nevermind one with the strikeout upside of Gray. To make things even more juicy, the Padres are second in the league in team strikeouts, just one strikeout behind the White Sox. Gray should be a staple of GPP lineups tonight and I could even see using him in cash.

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The best daily/weekly Player projections (hitters, starters, and relievers) for each of the next 7-10 days + next calendar week starting Friday. Kick-ass DFS lineup optimizer and projections for DraftKings, FanDuel, and Yahoo!.

With the minor league season winding down here in the waning weeks of the summer. I headed out to Pawtucket, RI on Wednesday in order to get some first hand looks at a pair of pitchers with the potential to be called-up when rosters expand in the coming days. The first was Phillies AAA ace Enyel De Los Santos, the right-hander with the mid-90’s fastball was the Phillies return for Freddy Galvis this winter, and has been very solid during his time in the Phillies organization. He debuted in the majors earlier this summer, making two starts in mid-July, before heading back to Lehigh Valley. He was back up for a relief appearance earlier this month, but has spent the majority of his season in the International League. The other arm was the Red Sox Mike Shawaryn, another arm I’ve discussed a little in my articles and on the podcast over the last few months. This was my second look at Shawaryn this season, and first in AAA. Both the Phillies and Red Sox are in the playoff push, and each of these arms could fill a variety of roles this season, and going forward. Let’s discuss what I witnessed.

You remember in Austin Powers when he gets his golf cart stuck in the tunnel and tries to make a u-turn and just goes back and forth unable to turn. That’s how I feel going between Tyler White and Tyler O’Neill. “Tyler O’Neill just homered…” *backs up golf cart* “Tyler White just homered…” *reverses golf cart* “O’Neill now!” *tries to turn wheel* “White does it again!” *gets out of golf cart and tries to move it manually, but have overestimated strength* “O’Neill with a round tripper!” *sighs, gets back in golf cart and checks Facebook menchies, overcome with helplessness of decisions* I do not know which Tyler I would go with anymore. Every day this week it has switched, sometimes it’s switched in the same day. Tyler White is top four slugging percentage in the majors leagues when sorting by 100 plate appearances, but just as soon as you say that Tyler O’Neill will go and do something. White is likely in a platoon, but when Ozuna returns, O’Neill will have same problems. I’d own both, but White is my favorite…*sees O’Neill hit a homer, reverses golf cart* Anyway, here’s some more players to Buy or Sell this week in fantasy baseball:

Happy Friday DFSers! We’ve got the full 15 game slate tonight on FanDuel, so let’s take this journey together. Blind resume time! Including his start on 7/1, the following pitcher has gone 53.1 IP with a 5.74 ERA and 1.52 WHIP over 10 starts. Guesses, guesses?? Nick Pivetta?? Drew Hutchison?? Jordan Zimmermann? Try, Zimmermann’s opposing SP, Luis Severino ($10,600). Of the 131 pitchers that have thrown >35 IP over that time period, his 5.74 ERA ranks 16th worst. Over those 10 starts, Severino’s only gone 6 or more innings twice, most recently on August 8th. One of the few bright spots on this resume is that the Ks have still been there. In fact, he’s sported a 29.6% K-rate over his last 4 starts. Soooooooo, what do we do with Severino? I think I’ll be fading him in cash, but his strikeout upside always makes him a GPP play. Let’s take a look at the rest of today’s slate.

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Been extremely hesitant about mentioning Luke Voit (2-for-4, 2 runs, 2 RBIs and his 4th homer), because I really don’t think much of him. He had a few good games that were amplified to 11 because of New York. So crazy to me that a guy like Voit is amplified to 11, mean’s while, Miguel Andujar has a huge rookie year and it’s crickets. Racist crickets, prolly. Throwing shade like a lamp! Voit will be in this afternoon’s buy column, but it’s going to be begrudgingly. He feels like he’s a hot streak from Matt Adams-type that will disappear in a few games. What’s Voit’s body type? I’m trying to fit a once-round peg into a recently-skinny hole. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

The GTA video game series will always be one of my favorites. I always appreciated the attention to detail, but at the end of the day, they were fun to play. Who doesn’t like carjacking people, “talking” to prostitutes, and causing mahem? Ok, maybe not the greatest game from a morality perspective. Anyways, one of the hallmarks of any of the GTA games was thievery, whether it be cars, banks, or friends, which is exactly where my mind ported to when I saw Greg Allen (29.7% owned – increase of 22.4%) was one of the most added players over the past week. Who? Exactly. I get it. SAGNOF. And since the beginning of the month, Allen is batting .306 and has 7 stolen bases. Here’s the thing, though. That lofty batting average is fueled by a .340 BABIP. The strikeout rate has been 11.9%. For the season, that number is right under 20%. Here’s the thing Part Deux. Allen’s OBP on the season is .285 and the walk rate is 3.6%. And he bats at the bottom of the order. Here’s the thing Part Tres. Allen is a .240-ish hitter. Low walk, low average batter that hits at the bottom of the order. TRASH

We begin this week with a public service announcement to remind you that playing in the deep end of fantasy baseball is not only fun and challenging, it can also be beneficial to other aspects of your fantasy baseball life. I mention this so that I can clumsily and shamelessly make reference to my Razzball Writers’ League RCL team, which I took on with some hesitation since the format felt so foreign and, well, difficult. My draft was not bad but not great, and the learning curve was indeed steep as the season began. But cut to the end of August, and I sit comfortably at the top of our league standings. I may even be in the top 5 overall, as I was last week, but evidently my team has scored so many runs that the overall standings couldn’t be accurately calculated (MattTruss may have explained this slightly better in his wrap-up on Tuesday). Am I crediting my perhaps-unexpected success in my first foray into the RCL world to my background playing in and writing about deep leagues? Not exactly, but it sure hasn’t hurt. Even though it is rare for an ultra-deep league guy to seriously come into play in leagues like the RCLs, it does happen on occasion. If nothing else, I certainly feel that needing to know more about depth charts and bullpens and such than the average fantasy player does help me in every league, regardless of format. Just something to think about if you haven’t taken the deep-league plunge yet but are considering it for next year… for now, we’ll move back to the present look at a handful of players that may be of interest to those currently in NL-only, AL-only, and other deep leagues.

Sexy young arms galore on this week’s Ditka, Sausage Pod! If you came upon this post by googling “sexy young sausage”, no judgment here, but this isn’t that kind of blog!

This week B_Don and Donkey Teeth profile four of the most exciting young starting pitchers in the game, as they take a look at the short debut outing of Michael Kopech squaring off against up and coming horse Jose Berrios.

Then the fellas circle back around to take a second look at Captain Jack Flaherty who was pitted in a fantastic duel against fellow rookie phenom Walker Buehler out in the city of angels. Find out which of these arms the guys like most down the stretch and going into drafts for 2019!

The show is wrapped up with the usual pickups segment highlighted by scorching hot Kendrys Morales.

Today’s slate shares some similarities with last week’s slate in it’s straightforwardness. However, whereas the simplicity of last week’s slate caused it to be incredibly boring and not worth playing, I’m not sure that’s the case this week. The reason why is that there’s some actual decisions here, ones where there may not be an obvious answer. The short version of it is this – because Justin Verlander is the overwhelmingly obvious cash pitcher, you’re not going to be able to afford that many high end bats. However, the two teams that are in the juiciest spots for offense today – the Yankees and the Red Sox, are both filled with a lot of high end bats. You probably can only afford one of Mookie Betts, J.D. Martinez, and Giancarlo Stanton – which one do you choose? Or, do you fade all three altogether to try to get two of three from the next tier (such as Benintendi or Andujar).

On to the picks…

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Yesterday, Christian Yelich hit for the cycle, going 6-for-6, 2 runs, 3 RBIs and his 26th homer, hitting .319. Yelich has been sexier than that random porn that was released of him. Speaking of porn (always a great intro to a sentence), you know you have a cougar problem when…True story, I woke up yesterday morning and Googled to see if there ever was a movie made called, Call Me By Your Ma’am with Kimothee ChalaMILF. That feels like too much information, but I trust you with everything, except any identifying details about me in real life. Any hoo! Yelich! Are you kidding me? Keyword is kidding, because he looks like he’s 12. Yo, you super pre-teen? You in Stranger Things? We’re at the point now when I’m starting to think about 2019, and Yelich, well, is there any way he’s not top 20? Yelich or Springer? Gotta be Yelich, right? Yelich or Bregman? Okay, tough call, but damn close. He’s definitely better than Kimothee ChalaMILF! Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball: